A recent Gartner study shows that business leaders using social recognition and reward systems report significant improvement in employee engagement and business outcomes.
The use of social and gamification concepts is transforming reward programs with accelerated adoption and sustained results, but inherent risks must be effectively monitored and managed.
Social recognition and reward concepts enable leaders to re-evaluate traditional approaches to performance management and other management systems.
Gartner recommends that business leaders:
- Capture baseline metrics across critical employee, customer and business performance measures, and continually monitor for impact and improvement.
- Evaluate the organization's cultural readiness, and plan for the impacts of increased transparency resulting from social technology deployment.
- Plan for and monitor the risks inherent in social-communications-based programs, and adopt an agile approach for risk mitigation.
- Look for design flexibility to meet different organizational objectives, including the ability to align all recognition programs — incentive, spot, milestone and others — under a unified program.